Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 07, 2014 @05:22PM
from the where's-the-ignition-switch dept.

MojoKid (1002251) writes News and rumors about Valve's upcoming Source 2 engine have been buzzing for months, but a recent update to DOTA 2 contains the most persuasive evidence yet that a major engine is in the works. After the last patch, the game now contains a number of programmed default paths, directories, and file names that didn't previously exist. Source-related DLLs and executables (engine.dll, vconsole.dll) have been updated to "engine2.dll" and vconsole2.dll." The tileset editor has a default Source path. There's also now an option to save files as "Source 1.0 Map Files" where no previous option existed. Here's the funny thing — while most people think of a game screenshot as the best evidence you can buy, low-level file directories, default trees, and changed application behavior is actually more persuasive. Source 1.0 was never updated to support DX11 or OpenGL 4.x, and while the engine can still be used for impressive titles, its DX9 limitations and ancient modding tools are showing their age. It's time to bring the game engine into the modern world, and hopefully these DOTA 2 updates mean that Valve is moving closer to that goal.

There is no singular "Steam Console", it's an (apparently loose) set of standards that Valve will expect manufacturers of Steam Machines to conform to. It is likely going to be a stillbirth, because (shockingly) a bunch of random companies schlocking together COTS hardware to meet a standard and getting nothing in return will not be able to compete (in terms of performance or price or both) with a few companies custom designing hardware and subsidizing the manufacturing cost with licensing fees.

Then how the "Non IBM"-PC worked at all?It was exactly a "bunch of random companies schlocking together COTS hardware to meet a standard and getting nothing in return" competing against closed boxes like the Amiga, ST,mac... and while they didn't as far i know used Subsidy, they were pretty much fully verticalized companies that had no way to compete against in price at least at the beginning.

A more modern example would be the Android, where its again a bunch of chinese manufacturers following an standard a

look even if it is in the far future of 2015, the argument still stands, they're sitting on it.

the joke is that I've quit anticipating next half life's release. I mean fuck, it's just going to be a tunnel(as in levels being tunnels from a to b) level shooter with 4 enemies and a broken plot. probably decent at that but hey, nothing to write home about, just like hl2 and the ep's. nothing more broken in a plot than to pausefreeze-end in the middle of a friggin explosion. -- and because of this they can kee

"If and when Valve ever makes Half-Life 3, you wonâ(TM)t have to get Steam to play it. In an interview with IGN, Valve says that it wouldnâ(TM)t dream of using its software division to make exclusive games for the Steam OS, because that just isnâ(TM)t the way Valve looks at the world.

âoeYou wonâ(TM)t see an exclusive killer app for SteamOS from us. Weâ(TM)re not going to be doing that kind of thing,â Valveâ(TM)s Greg Comer told IGN."

Wow. Do you play all your games like that? You must have raced through the game, blasting everything in your path. I realize that official speedruns of HL2 are probably way faster than 3hrs, but it still must have been a hectic run through the game.

I like to be sneaky, explore the environments, enjoy the views, smell the roses and listen to the stuff the NPC's have to say before moving on.

Indeed... It's definitely running something different to the normal engine. There are a few minor differences, but the most noticeable (and telling) one is that several graphical effects are a bit buggy or otherwise "strange" in the editor version of the game.

I wholeheartedly agree. Source is heavily modded Q1. I think it's pretty shady that they gave it their own name after replacing enough code that they felt justified to call it a completely new engine. It's Q1.

What the heck is "reminisces" supposed to mean in this context? Of all the words you could have chosen, it most certainly does exactly that. I don't care how much code you rip out and replace over time. Everything after GoldSrc was built on top of it, so how does it magically become something different? It's still built on the same basic set of ideas, and to this day, some parts of environments created in the engine are plagued by the same type of geometric limitations as every other Q1-based engine.

All it has is reasonably decent physics and facial animation. (the former being very hacky at best. you can destroy the game so easily by doing even simple things, like giving something 0 weight, cool impossible division bro)

Branching on the scenario of an object having zero mass in a physics simulation would be a waste, surely? The probability of someone wanting to create something in a physics simulation for a game with a mass of zero is pretty low. Workaround with similar impact is to give it a mass of 1 and call it a day. That's not a problem a player would ever encounter nor most developers, seems like a pretty weak example.

Even the modding wasn't that good. Most of them were poor quality and the only really good ones either never came out, came out after all the hype died down, or got abandoned in a buggy state. Damn shame. So many good mods got left to rot from this supposed "godsend" to modders. (hey, at least it isn't UDK2, holy shit that UI, how could they have lived with such an obtuse and inflexible UI?!)
I think Black Mesa is about the only really thing that kept the dream alive.

Mods have came out and hit it big, like Gary's Mod, and others have failed. That's not an indictment

Mods have came out and hit it big, like Gary's Mod, and others have failed. That's not an indictment of the engine, but of the teams doing the modding that couldn't meet their ambitions. Sure, the engine definitely doesn't make it easy for them compared to e.g. Unity3D,

No modding has gotten more expensive since Quake. The graphical fidelity expected today makes mods which can't reach it extremely jarring. If you can produce material of that quality, you're already basically good enough to work for a game company and get paid for it.

No modding has gotten more expensive since Quake. The graphical fidelity expected today makes mods which can't reach it extremely jarring.

Bananas. People still play lo-fi games. People are trying to match up to AAA titles with their mods when it's not necessary, and as a result never finishing their mod, which as a further result is frustrating and thus not actually worth playing.

Right. But if you can make a lo-fi game....why not sell it? Modding is dying because the market is getting a lot easier to access and the toolkits are getting easier to use. We're closing in on the point where a competent modding team is essentially a competent development team who definitely should sell the product they create from the outset.

I'd argue also it's a consequence of the mean age of gamers being somewhere in the 30s now. We all have disposable income - I don't have to pick "free" to have my pro

Well I don't know about you, but the day that half-life2 came out the source engine kicked ass, water looked gorgeous, the physics was sophisticated for the time the facial animation was the best there was for games, the graphics just plain looked good and the damn thing could run in reasonably spec pcs of the time. To this day I still consider HL2 the best game ever.

I care little for half life (iunno, I just can't see what others do, not particularly impressed by anything in any of the games).

I don't like steam and valve for different reasons though, steam because it is DRM and valve because despite their (well gaben's) public stance on win8 was valid criticism, at the time, it was, however, hypocritical for them to say it considering what they're attempting to do with steam and more broadly their steamOS.

I don't like steam and valve for different reasons though, steam because it is DRM

Consoles and iOS are even worse DRM-wise.

at the time, it was, however, hypocritical for them to [dis Windows Store] considering what they're attempting to do with steam and more broadly their steamOS.

At the time, Microsoft was heavily pushing Windows RT, which doesn't usefully allow sideloading. Steam OS, by contrast, lets users sideload GNU/Linux games or Wine games obtained other than through Steam.

Steamworks games have DRM which is probably worse than consoles. You generally must be online, and you must have steam running to play the games. Consoles, generally still don't do this. Valve have improved their offline mode, but for a long time no internet meant no play. From what I can see, it's still a paint in the arse, and doesn't allow you to completely run games if your internet drops out all of a sudden. I've had a lot of experience in dealing with steams heavy handed approach to staying online.

From what I can see, it's still a paint in the arse, and doesn't allow you to completely run games if your internet drops out all of a sudden

I wonder if you're confusing it with the continuous DRM in SimCity and Assassin's Creed 2. Steam requires receipt renewal every couple weeks and that's it.

Sideloading is a non-issue since WinRT was always intended for ARM processors.

How is that relevant? Android is for ARM and you can sideload. So was RISC OS. Windows RT is for ARM and you can't. Nor can you develop directly on a device even if it is docked to an external keyboard and monitor. There's no Visual Studio RT, for instance, unlike Steam OS that can accept any GNOME app such as an IDE.

I wonder if you're confusing it with the continuous DRM in SimCity and Assassin's Creed 2. Steam requires receipt renewal every couple weeks and that's it.

Nope, it's only from a few years ago where they relaxed the requirement. Certainly when I made a steam account, if you didn't move into offline mode while you were online, it wouldn't let you. So if you lost your internet connection, then tough. Steam in the very early days was an abortion comparable to simcity and AC2, actually probably worse all due to DRM requirements. None of this changed until the last 2-4 years where things were starting to get improved. But like you have shown, it still requires you

Valve has real problems with focus. The thing is that they have Steam as this massive cash cow. They make so much money, tens of millions of dollars per employee, that they needn't do anything else. Every other project can fail and bleed cash and they'll be fine. You then combine that with their "no management" structure where everything is done by cliques and you have a situation for things to get abandoned. They go after what various people are interested in, and if interest drops, the project stalls or d

Maybe buy an OS that lets you configure some of the basics of where you store things?

Hell, most of my users don't even know where their profiles, documents, favourites, etc. actually end up unless they bother to look into it. And you can set whatever you want to be an SSD and store whatever you want on it.

The biggest thing I hate about MacOS is "we know better, so you don't get the option".